The ten commandments of PPC

*Disclaimer: this article is not written for religious individuals, nor it tries to negatively engage with them. Please keep the sarcastic tone in mind while reading it.

1. You shall the words of Google.

Google is the god of advertising. He can put your ad on any website you desire, in any corner of internet your target persona hides.

Do you have a question? Ask and Google shall answer every single time.

We still don’t have a clear idea how everything function, but it has been the subject of many researches and studies. And the conclusion was: PPC is made by Google’s desire and mind and he was very generous to share it with us, mortals. Praise!

2. You shall not make for yourself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it.

The PPC results won’t make discrimination. It will you the best or worse results depending on how much love and passion you invested in optimising the campaign. And all it asks in return for this is minimal. No need to build a PPC sign to replace the Hollywood one. No!

All you need to do is to build an ad relevant to your landing page, spend countless hours researching relevant keywords so he can judge you by the quality of your thinking to know how much your bid is going to cost. Fail to do it properly and your competitor with the highest CPC bid and Quality Score wins the top sweet spot.

So don’t honour PPC in the traditional ways, but do everything else or else…

3. You shall not misuse the name of PPC.

Especially when your client doesn’t know the difference between PPC and Display Search. In the brief, he clearly demands a PPC campaign and his video to be on every website in the country. Now take a deep breath and ask for an urgent meeting.

4. You shall remember and keep the Negative Keywords holy.

Not enough people are optimising their campaign with negative words. The results can be catastrophic.

Let’s take a case study.

You are preparing a beautiful PPC for an airline company. It has a great ad, on point winning bid and they just want a little bit more. The campaign starts and it delivers expected results from the first days.

But their Facebook page starts to receive negative reviews and their email inbox starts to fill with not-so-happy texts.

Odd… but what if your add was displaying when everything was about the latest plane crash. Mourning families, hurt survivors and sensitive people are now campaigning against your brand.

In Negative Keywords we trust!

5. Respect your father and mother.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the best people you can hope to meet in your life.

They are both ranked on Forbes’ list of The World’s Billionaires, a sign of their genius. But these two quirky computer scientists are also donating big to charities. They are actively involved in improving the world we live in through revolutionary products. You wish your parents were this cool, don’t you?

6. You must not commit murder.

Be patient. A campaign cannot deliver the final results from day 1. Rather than killing it after a week, optimise it. This is your baby and you are responsible for it. Every time you end a campaign earlier, you create a financial loss for your client and a baby goat dies. And Larry will never forgive you for this!

Stop killing baby goats, people!

7. You must not commit adultery.

If you cheated on your Adwords exam, it will show.

If you go to Bing to find the answers, Google will know. If you even think of it, cookies will know.

8. You must not steal.

Yes, I’m looking at you, Domino’s!

Putting your rival’s brand name as your keyword and then placing a higher bet, it’s a sneaky move. Why do you need to steal someone else’s fans? Your insecurity will be noticed. In the long game, it will show.

But as a short-term strategy? Congratulation to the first person who thought of it!

9. You must not give false evidence against your neighbour.

If you are a PPC specialist, your LinkedIn inbox is full of business owners asking to pick up your brain for some free tips and tricks.

I know this can be either annoying or very funny. If you are on the latter category, you probably give them false information. And you’re very pleased with yourself when they come back asking why their ad ranking is so low and their campaign doesn’t deliver.

Now I know you are probably tempted to ask for a print screen and make fun with your fellow Googlers. Those businessmen are your potential source of revenue, so go on this path, instead of giving them false hopes.

10. You must not be envious of your neighbour’s PPC campaign.

Your time will come. You might not have the budget for that sweet top spot right now, but one of these days you will dominate your ROI!

Contributor

Daniela Nastase

A strategic thinker with a creative twist at your fingertips. Connect with her on LinkedIn.